Today's TLA is GUP
God's Urgent Priority
My claim is that God is the urgent priority for Christians. Some of you might say what the heck is Jonathan talking about? Or maybe some will say why is he all of the sudden turning to God? Or perhaps saying Jonathan is religious? Hmmmm I never knew that. I make this claim because its the truth.
Priorities in my life in my early to mid 20's have all been for the trivial, materialistic, and ingenuine consumption driven priorities. Why do I fall for the trap? Am I just a robot ready to consume what the flashing bright colors of the TV and/or Google Ads tell me? I have to analyze this because well I was a Math major in college what good is having a Math degree if I am not using critical analysis to solve this problem. And for me this is a huge problem.
I started analyzing volunteer work in high school. I asked the simple question the other day. Why did people volunteer in High School? Did my generation just volunteer as a front to make it look good for potential colleges? Most of us never ever volunteer again in college and after college. I attended a catholic high school that required at least 100 hours of community service for their 4 years in high school. However, once I attended college I never volunteered. Sure there were probably more resources to do the volunteering and helping out others, but I decided it was not a priority. The priority was to finish school, get that degree, get a job, don't get laid off, contribute to a 401k, get a car, work hard, and then die. I essentially thought of volunteering as a chore or a trivial check mark for an admission officer, rather than a noble act of kindness for others. It was just a means to an end. What kind of f---ed up philosophy is that?
Am I doing things to look good rather than just to be good? Where is the urgency to help out anymore? Why do charities only give out food on certain days? Don't they know there are other days other than Thanksgiving and Christmas. Don't they know there are people who are starving on a random Wednesday in May. Why aren't people willing to give turkey, yams, sweet potato, garlic mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce on a random Wednesday in May? The reason being, God is not the urgent priority in "normal" American culture and thought. I use the word urgency, because without it, a person is complacent, lazy, and pretty much useless. Urgency makes people actually do something. A lack of urgency makes people do nothing.
I want to think about this for a second, throughout school deadlines made me feel urgent. I have to do this assignment or else I will fail, the school will not give me money, I will have to get a blue collar job, I will be stuck in the growing middle class, and rent forever. But this kind of urgency is fearful urgency. This is stupid now that I think of it, because well I live in the Silicon Valley and it does not matter if I have a blue collar job or white collar job, I will rent FOREVER. I am talking about an urgency to do something more. For me, this came during my junior year in college. I once made up a slogan which read, "If not us, who?" I don't know why I made it up, but at the time, I felt this sudden emotional urgency to yell it out. If its not me, then who? The future students? The past students? Why don't I step up and just f---ing do it now?
It is this fearless attitude in taking on problems and dealing with the problems head on, rather than doing nothing and letting problems persist. I didn't necessarily know how to make a movement happen, but back then we knew we were right and the administration was dead f---ing wrong. But for a while I lost that urgency. After that standoff went down, everyone kind of went their own separate ways. Some people got married, some people went to law school and used this experience as a stepping stone for law school, some went to becoming engineers, but as I look back most of us will never have that urgent feeling to make a change in this world again. Why is that? Why do we accept the current world view as normal? I don't think God wants us to follow the normal way of life. I think God wants us to be that annoying statistical outlier that skews a Gaussian or normal distribution (Sorry I am totally Math geekin'out in this sentence). I think people who are "normal" (close to the statistical mean) are often very mean (opposite of nice). Jesus died for us, because he was "not normal." He was different.
Why do people accept things and stand down easily? Why don't we question everything that is normal and put God as the urgent priority? What if people started doing this? Sure maybe will we be wrong at sometimes for being that outlier for God, but I think that is highly unlikely if God is the priority for one's life. I don't know if I will ever master putting God at the top all the time, but realizing that he should be the top priority has to be positive indication and a good start. I think life is like that though, what's fun in mastering and learning something the first time? We learn so much more when we make mistakes, try different solutions, putting different priorities other than God, and then finally learning something. Anyways, hopefully this realization will make me more urgent about things in my life. Who knows? Oh yeah that's right God will know. Let me know what you all think. I think I lost most readers when I started geeking out with the Math.
Enjoy,
Jonathan
God's Urgent Priority
My claim is that God is the urgent priority for Christians. Some of you might say what the heck is Jonathan talking about? Or maybe some will say why is he all of the sudden turning to God? Or perhaps saying Jonathan is religious? Hmmmm I never knew that. I make this claim because its the truth.
Priorities in my life in my early to mid 20's have all been for the trivial, materialistic, and ingenuine consumption driven priorities. Why do I fall for the trap? Am I just a robot ready to consume what the flashing bright colors of the TV and/or Google Ads tell me? I have to analyze this because well I was a Math major in college what good is having a Math degree if I am not using critical analysis to solve this problem. And for me this is a huge problem.
I started analyzing volunteer work in high school. I asked the simple question the other day. Why did people volunteer in High School? Did my generation just volunteer as a front to make it look good for potential colleges? Most of us never ever volunteer again in college and after college. I attended a catholic high school that required at least 100 hours of community service for their 4 years in high school. However, once I attended college I never volunteered. Sure there were probably more resources to do the volunteering and helping out others, but I decided it was not a priority. The priority was to finish school, get that degree, get a job, don't get laid off, contribute to a 401k, get a car, work hard, and then die. I essentially thought of volunteering as a chore or a trivial check mark for an admission officer, rather than a noble act of kindness for others. It was just a means to an end. What kind of f---ed up philosophy is that?
Am I doing things to look good rather than just to be good? Where is the urgency to help out anymore? Why do charities only give out food on certain days? Don't they know there are other days other than Thanksgiving and Christmas. Don't they know there are people who are starving on a random Wednesday in May. Why aren't people willing to give turkey, yams, sweet potato, garlic mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce on a random Wednesday in May? The reason being, God is not the urgent priority in "normal" American culture and thought. I use the word urgency, because without it, a person is complacent, lazy, and pretty much useless. Urgency makes people actually do something. A lack of urgency makes people do nothing.
I want to think about this for a second, throughout school deadlines made me feel urgent. I have to do this assignment or else I will fail, the school will not give me money, I will have to get a blue collar job, I will be stuck in the growing middle class, and rent forever. But this kind of urgency is fearful urgency. This is stupid now that I think of it, because well I live in the Silicon Valley and it does not matter if I have a blue collar job or white collar job, I will rent FOREVER. I am talking about an urgency to do something more. For me, this came during my junior year in college. I once made up a slogan which read, "If not us, who?" I don't know why I made it up, but at the time, I felt this sudden emotional urgency to yell it out. If its not me, then who? The future students? The past students? Why don't I step up and just f---ing do it now?
It is this fearless attitude in taking on problems and dealing with the problems head on, rather than doing nothing and letting problems persist. I didn't necessarily know how to make a movement happen, but back then we knew we were right and the administration was dead f---ing wrong. But for a while I lost that urgency. After that standoff went down, everyone kind of went their own separate ways. Some people got married, some people went to law school and used this experience as a stepping stone for law school, some went to becoming engineers, but as I look back most of us will never have that urgent feeling to make a change in this world again. Why is that? Why do we accept the current world view as normal? I don't think God wants us to follow the normal way of life. I think God wants us to be that annoying statistical outlier that skews a Gaussian or normal distribution (Sorry I am totally Math geekin'out in this sentence). I think people who are "normal" (close to the statistical mean) are often very mean (opposite of nice). Jesus died for us, because he was "not normal." He was different.
Why do people accept things and stand down easily? Why don't we question everything that is normal and put God as the urgent priority? What if people started doing this? Sure maybe will we be wrong at sometimes for being that outlier for God, but I think that is highly unlikely if God is the priority for one's life. I don't know if I will ever master putting God at the top all the time, but realizing that he should be the top priority has to be positive indication and a good start. I think life is like that though, what's fun in mastering and learning something the first time? We learn so much more when we make mistakes, try different solutions, putting different priorities other than God, and then finally learning something. Anyways, hopefully this realization will make me more urgent about things in my life. Who knows? Oh yeah that's right God will know. Let me know what you all think. I think I lost most readers when I started geeking out with the Math.
Enjoy,
Jonathan
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